Unspoken, Understood
by generalsleepy
Summary: Frank has been kidnapped. Joe finds him having lost his voice from screaming, but they've never needed words to communicate their feelings for each other. Warning for implied torture.


Why did the house have to have so many goddamn rooms? Why in the hell would anyone ever need this many rooms in their house? What would you even do with all of them?

Joe guessed whoever designed the mansion back in eighteen-whatever just had a feeling that someday it would belong to a sick bastard who needed plenty of places to hide a captive.

"Frank!"

Joe made his way down what felt like the millionth hallway. He opened every door he found. All of them were unlocked, though a few took a good shove, seemingly from how long it had been since they were opened. Many of them were bare or filled with enough furniture to identify them as bedrooms or sitting rooms. Most of them were covered in what looked like decades' worth of dust and cobwebs. He still ran inside, shouting like a maniac and searching for closets or trapdoors or any place that might be big enough to hide a person.

"Frank!"

His throat was hoarse from yelling his brother's name. He knew he was running a risk that the heavy he'd knocked out and tied up in the lobby would wake up and get free. Or there could be more goons in the house. Or the house's owner, John Renton, eccentric millionaire and arms smuggler with a side business in child abduction, could come back to his mansion.

But, Joe had decided it was more important to find Frank quickly, and then get them out of stately Creep Manor. He was willing to throw stealth out the window.

"Frank! Frank, it's Joe! The coast is clear! Just let me know where you are!"

Standing in a hallway flanked by open doors, Joe held his breath, listening for the tiniest noise. He wished he could make his pounding heart shut up for a moment.

He'd figured out that Renton was responsible for both the smuggling and abductions-though the police didn't take their evidence seriously-and the mansion was where he held his "merchandise," before shipping the children and materiel overseas. Frank had disappeared while on a stakeout. There was only one person who would have the motivation to grab Frank at that exact moment, and there was only one place where he would be kept.

Frank had to be there. Somewhere in this moldering labyrinth, his brother was being held captive, maybe injured.

After running through several hallways he'd already been through, Joe decided he'd searched the whole of the second floor as best he could. That left one more, plus the attic. He squared his shoulders as he raced up the stairs, taking two at a time. It wouldn't matter if there were ten more floors to go: he wasn't going to stop until he found his brother.

Still, he had to catch his breath when he reached the landing, before he could start shouting again. "Frank!"

More hallways, more doors, more abandoned rooms, and no trace of his brother.

But, that didn't matter, because Joe was going to find him. He was .

"Frank!" He stopped to listen.

Please, Frank. Please. Answer me. I need you.

He held his breath, shut his eyes, and listened.

Thud!

His eyes flew open. The sound was muffled and distant, but he knew that he'd heard it.

"Frank!" he yelled as loud as he could. "I can hear you! Where are you?'

He didn't hear anything else, but that didn't tamp down his excitement. He picked the direction that he thought the sound had came from and set off at a run. "I'm coming, Frank!" He turned around a corner into another hallway.

Goddamn doors!

He tore open the first one on the left. Empty room with mildew stain on the ceiling. First on the right. Billiards room-this one looking like it had been recently inhabited. Second on the left.

He only took in one detail: the ornate king bed and the figure laying on it.

"Frank!"

Joe almost tripped over his own feet running to the bed. "Oh, god, Frank!"

Frank was lying close to the edge of the bed. He was shirtless, in only his boxers. His arms were tied to his sides with rope, his hands lashed in front of him. His ankles were tied together also; there was a metal shackle around one connected by a chain to the foot of the bed. Around his neck was a leather collar attached to another chain locked to the headboard. He wasn't gagged, so Joe couldn't figure out why he hadn't responded to Joe's shouts.

He saw as he rushed to his brother's side that a bedside table had been knocked over. Probably that was how Frank had gotten his attention. Judging by the way he was trussed up, it must have taken all of his strength and energy. He was staring up at Joe with tears welling up in his eyes. His mouth was open, but no sound was coming out.

Joe's first impulse was to pull Frank into a hug, to reassure himself that he was really there. As he took in Frank's appearance, though, his stomach turned. His body was covered in bruises in all shades, along with welts that looked like they came from a belt or a whip. He had one black eye and a scratch on one of his cheeks. He had clearly been beaten repeatedly over the nine days he had been missing.

For a moment, Joe was overwhelmed, with no idea where to start helping his brother. His throat was burning, but he forced himself to swallow down the tears. He wouldn't help anyone if he started blubbering.

"It's okay, Frank. I'm here. You're gonna be okay. I knocked out the guard and tied him up and Renton's away. We're gonna get you out of here. Just hold on." He dug in his pocket for his knife, then set to sawing away at the ropes. "Frank, why didn't you say anything? What's wrong?"

Once Frank had a hand free he shakily raised it to point at his throat, then shook his head.

"You can't talk?"

He nodded.

"What happened? Did they do something to you?"

He shook his head again. He opened his mouth wide in a silent scream.

"You lost your voice." At Frank's nod, Joe squeezed the knife handle painfully tight. Frank had screamed so much that he had blown out his vocal chords. He'd been put through hell, and there had been no one there to help him. The only people to hear him scream had been the people hurting him. "Oh, god, Frank, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry…"

Frank shook his head. He reached out a trembling hand and grabbed at Joe's shirt, the feeble grip seemingly the best that he could manage.

"I'll get you out of this." Joe babbled as he continued working on the ropes. "I'll get this all off of you, and we'll get you to the hospital. We'll get the cops here, and they're gonna arrest Renton, and he's gonna go to jail or he better hope so, because otherwise I swear I'm going to kill him."

He freed Frank's arms and ankles and then went to the collar. He felt like an idiot when he realized that the collar just unbuckled, and he could have had it off in a second. He had no idea what he was going to do about the shackle, but he was going to at least deal with what he could at the moment.

Joe didn't think that he could feel more sick about what had happened to his brother, until he saw the distinct hand shaped bruises around Frank's neck. "Oh, god…"

Frank tugged on Joe's shirt. When he had Joe's attention, he mimed texting.

Joe stared dumbly for a second, before his overloaded brain processed what Frank was asking for. "Yeah, yeah. Here." He pulled out his phone (not much use with the lack of service in the area) and opened up a blank text, before placing it in Frank's hand.

Grabbed me in car hit wiht stun gun put mr in trunk

"How many?"

Frank held up one finger. He kept typing. Not renton took me her and brought me to him told me about where they took kids

"It's okay. You can tell us all about that later. God, what did they do to you?" He immediately regretted the stupid question. He knew that they'd tortured him. He didn't need to force Frank to go through the specifics. "I'm sorry, I didn't…"

Frank was already texting, though. A lot didnt want info just kept

His fingers stopped, as his hands began trembling worse.

"Was it Renton? Did he do it?"

Frank nodded. Mostly , he typed.

Joe visualized the man's horrible, smug face and was overwhelmed with quaking rage. He could kill him. If Renton was in front of him right now, he would kill him in an instant, stab him, bash his head in, choke him and let him see how he liked it. His muscles were physically tense with the hatred coursing through him.

But, that wasn't going to help him right now. Right now, he needed to focus on helping Frank and getting the both of them to safety. As satisfying as they were, those homicidal fantasies weren't productive. That was exactly what Frank would tell him if he could.

Frank put down the phone and moved his hands up to hug himself. Joe realized that he had to be freezing. He quickly pulled off his jacket and laid it over Frank like a blanket.

" Thank you ," Frank mouthed.

"Do you know if there's a key to the ankle cuff nearby? Because, you know, there's always a key on a ring on the wall, right? It's bad guy code."

To Joe's relief, Frank managed a tired smile as he shook his head. Joe took his lockpicking tools from his pocket and hoped that the lock on the cuff was as easy as it looked. "Almost got it," he promised as he worked. "Almost…"

Finally, finally , the mechanism clicked open. Joe eased the cuff off, hating the raw, red mark it left. Frank slowly drew his legs up closer to his chest. Joe reached over Frank so that he could pull the other half of the blankets over his brother.

He touched Frank's cheek and looked down into the bright, intelligent brown eyes that he had missed so much. That he had been terrified he would never see again. He leaned down to pull his brother into the tightest hug that he thought he could without hurting him. "I love you, Frank. I missed you. I missed you so much."

Joe felt Frank free a hand from the cocoon of blankets. He put it on the back of Joe's head, threading his fingers through his hair. Even though Frank had lost his voice, Joe could still hear him clearly. I love you, too. 


End file.
